A progressive look at US political, foreign policy, social, law and war-and-peace issues through the eyes of a slightly deranged ex-pat Yank writing from Canada.
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Monday, October 26, 2009

Confessions Of A Techno-Luddite

As the weekend arrived, The New York Times carried a semi-sneering piece on the tiny and ever-dwindling number of people who still refuse to have a cell phone. It cites a study done by the Pew Internet and American Life Project that finds more than 85% of all Americans now have a mobile; the Federal Communications Commission says cell phones caught on faster than either cable TV or home computers.

While Pew concludes that cell “refuseniks” generally are less educated and poorer than people who have them, it concedes grudgingly there is “a subset of adults who resist cell phones simply because they do not want them. They resent the way (cells) disrupt face-to-face conversation. They savour their moments alone and prize the fact that no one knows how to reach them.”

“It’s a luxury not to be reached when I’m out and about,” Han, a 34-year-old Los Angeles-based writer-editor, tells the Times.

D'accord!

The paper has a Toronto bureau but no one called me for the story. If they had, I would have been delighted to explain why I am a complete techno-Luddite: Not only do I not have a cell phone, I don’t own a BlackBerry, pager, PDA, laptop, digital camera, Webcam, iPod, iBook or, for that matter, iAnything, cordless phone, home network, WiFi, Wii, Skype, Kindle and whatever else took the world by storm yesterday. I don’t download music, movies or porn from the intertubes. I don’t bank, direct deposit or buy on-line, and avoid ATMs. My e-mail includes an instant message feature but I never activated it. For that matter, I’ve never sent a text message, visited a chat room, had a Facebook page or Twittered; no one cares that I’m leaving for lunch now or that I’ve just returned.

Who could possibly care whether anyone is leaving for lunch? And I don’t want people to interrupt me when I’m eating.

“Cell refuseniks are making a statement that they control their availability,” John Horrigan, research director at the National Broadband Task Force, speculates.

Precisely.

Little Protest

Maybe Horrigan is right, but I’m also making a different statement, a tiny protest that’s probably as effective as telling Lou Dobbs that immigrants are good for America: Just because technology lets you do something doesn’t mean you should or that it’s even a good idea.

Apparently, people like me are such an oddity that the on-line edition of the otherwise august and totally sober Columbia Journalism Review made note of the Times’ article.

It’s true, we are an oddity. When people ask for my cell number, they’re aghast when I explain I don’t have one, offering my old fashioned land line instead.

“No cell phone?” comes the incredulous reply. “Seriously? How do you survive without one?”

I survive just fine but Sheila Shirazi admits discarding friends who go without, telling the Times, “I don’t have the time and energy … to coordinate with somebody who isn’t mobile.”

Ms. Shirazi isn’t unique.

A few years back, a woman I was mildly interested in seeing dumped me during our first dinner together because I don’t have a cell. Over the decades, I’ve been rejected by women for countless reasons, good and goofy, but never because I refused to tote around a small piece of gadgetry. On Seinfeld, Jerry once stopped dating a woman because she ate peas one at a time; my fledgling romance was nipped-in-the-bud and died for about as rational a reason.

Get Serious

OK, I admit snatching at technology when it’s useful. I never grasped Dewey’s decimal system for library research at school but I mastered the art of crafty searching and rummage around on Google numerous times every day.

And I do see value in having a stand-by cell phone for some people: Those travelling lonely roads by themselves. Kids, so they can reach a parent quickly. The sick and disabled to get help quickly. Critical care doctors.

But come on.

I’ve followed tweeners through malls who were on cell phones the entire time. What could they be talking about? The Gap has a sale? Joey likes Deirdre? The math test was really hard?

I’ve eaten in spiffy boittes where everyone at a table was “celling” so why did they bother eating together? Hong Kong has it right: Most restaurants demand mobiles be turned off and checked with the maitre d’ before being seated.

I’ve ridden trains where cell phone users were forced to shout over the track noise, making everyone else in the car unwilling participants in the call.

I’ve sat in offices where the person across the desk wore an earpiece cell phone so I never knew if they were speaking to me or to the phone.

It’s a losing battle, I realise, my fight against cells and other techno-stuff. The 5% of us who don’t always want to be instantly connected to everyone else are like Dutch boys with our fingers in the dikes. We may stop one small leak but waves of water are washing over the top, drowning us in a sea of gizmos and gadgets.

3 comments:

Barb Lennix
said...

You're not alone. I resisted getting one as well until two years ago, as I found it totally unnecessary (and unwanted frankly) for anyone to have 24/7 access to me wherever I am. I happen to value my privacy!!!!!!!!!!! But, because of where I live and the number of times I'm up and down an isolated highway at odd hours and in all kinds of weather, I relented and grabbed a little cheapy pay and talk. I throw a few bucks into it now and then and if I run into trouble on the road or I'm running late, I can call out. That's it.

I know what you mean about resisting the instrusion. When I was publishing magazines as the hands-on managing editor, I thought of myself as a Luddite, too. I thought I'd never let go of printed magazines - or newspapers, for that matter. I loved not just the editorial content - or given the magazines I worked on, especially not the content - but the heft of the book, the feel of the pages, even the smell. Now my magazines just stack up on the corner of my desk, reminders to go check the same material online.

I was slow to get a cell phone, too, but broke down when my boss and I walked off an airplane and she called her husband and daughter on the way to our luggage. I had to wait an hour or more to call my wife at the time and our daughter from the hotel room. But even now, I rarely give out the number, and it's usually just my wife, exwife, or daughter calling.

I use my cell phone extensively for what work is actually out there, commercial construction having virtually come to a dead halt in South Florida, because it allows me to be in one place and getting info needed from another place when neither place has a landline. In the old days what used to take hours and hours of running around now takes a simple ten button push. Lovely.

On the other hand, I cannot stand the "social' network sites like mySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc. and only have a page up on Facebook so my kids can write witty things about Dad's activities, and send a little love note from time to time. Otherwise, the perps should be jailed for excessive use of public bandwidth.

As for online activities - I love most of it. I figure I save at least $10/month in postage alone, another $500 a quarter (or $2K annually) in purchases of must have stuff - like clothing, golf and sporting goods, presents to family, and birthday, Christmas, etc. greeting cards. Nothing like a emailed singing card that costs zilch.

As for ATMs, how does one travel anywhere without them? Last time in Europe I never used a conversion service once, go to the local ATM, slide in the card, punch up my wanted bucks, get the LIBOR rate, and voila - in the native currency perfectly done. It is almost as good as sex.

However, I do believe in proper technology etiquette, and have gone so far as to politely ask folks in a restauarnt that their yapping on their phones was causing great disturbance at our table, and further conversation on their part would probably result in a whistleblower award for me from the IRS. Damn, that works great....

Kids are embedded with microchips now so don't worry about them. It will drop the crime rate by 70% in twenty years because everyone in the world can find out where everyone else has been for the past six months easy. Alibis simply will not exist. And PEOPLE Magazine will save thousands and thousands.

Charley James

About Me

If you were born in post-war Milwaukee, you were born a Democrat. So I gravitated naturally to liberal politics, first as journalist and then an activist. I've been writing since I was eight years old and, after working far too long in newsrooms - local newspapers, major market television and radio stations, assistant editor of a major business newsweekly - I've spent much of the past decade as an independent investigtative jouralist. Media outlets have published, cited or quoted me including The Globe and Mail, The National Post, The Financial Post, TruthOut, LA Progressive, UK Progressive, TVO, PBS and BBC News. When not covering and writing about politics, I scribble out random thoughts on the peculiarites of modern times.